Four Apple tidbits prior to Apple's earnings today.
We put our Mac OS X Leopard Family Pack order in this weekend, so we're looking forward to getting our DVD on Friday to upgrade our home laptops and desktops. However, my son Robert pointed out to me that Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is rumored to not be supporting Classic applications any more. Given we still have a few G4-based machines and some old games that go back to 1985 that currently still run (!), that would certainly mark the end of an era for us should it turn out to be true. So we're hoping to install Leopard as a dual-boot system on my old dual-800 MHz G4. Oh, and lest anyone note that Leopard won't install on that machine because it doesn't meet the minimum requirements, have no fear -- we intend to install it by mounting its disks via Firewire to a faster machine. We'll let you know how that goes. Given that we've had great experiences installing Mac OS X on other old machines, I doubt this will be any different.
Meanwhile, data like this from Harvard University showing that Macs now comprise 30% of its computers on average seems to lend credence to the idea that Apple is going to report blow-out Mac sales in its earnings call today. We've had similar data in our model for more than a month now, so our prediction for the call is for earnings of $0.97 a share, and $3.98 for the year. Whether that meets or exceeds investor expectations is anyone's guess. Despite it being a blow-out, I expect that the share price to be up and down big time over the next 24 hours. Such is the life of the stock market.
And finally, Walt Mossberg has a terrific article today titled Free My Phone where he argues that consumers should have the right to use any handset and any handset software on any wireless network here in the US, just as they do with wired phones. This is not a new idea -- Google has been pushing a similar idea in its bid for 700 MHz spectrum, but it's terrific to see Mossberg bringing his consumer advocacy into this public debate. I agree with his point of view 100%.
Finally, I hope to get a blog entry up this evening after Apple earnings are announced. However, if I don't, I won't be able to post an entry until Tuesday afternoon because I'm doing a major client presentation in Boston Tuesday morning. My apologies; I'm sure there'll be some juicy data to discuss.
Full disclosure: the author owns Apple stock (still).
More full disclosure: I recognize that it may be annoying to regular readers to have to re-read the above disclosure on most of my posts. Perhaps this explanation will help: some of the syndication networks that carry my articles require the disclosure statement to ensure that I have no hidden conflicts of interest (there's that private versus public data thing again). I consider the disclosure to be important so that readers can properly weigh my opinions, so I will continue making them, considering them one of the prices of broad distribution. But I do apologize for the inconvenience to regular readers.
Meanwhile, data like this from Harvard University showing that Macs now comprise 30% of its computers on average seems to lend credence to the idea that Apple is going to report blow-out Mac sales in its earnings call today. We've had similar data in our model for more than a month now, so our prediction for the call is for earnings of $0.97 a share, and $3.98 for the year. Whether that meets or exceeds investor expectations is anyone's guess. Despite it being a blow-out, I expect that the share price to be up and down big time over the next 24 hours. Such is the life of the stock market.
And finally, Walt Mossberg has a terrific article today titled Free My Phone where he argues that consumers should have the right to use any handset and any handset software on any wireless network here in the US, just as they do with wired phones. This is not a new idea -- Google has been pushing a similar idea in its bid for 700 MHz spectrum, but it's terrific to see Mossberg bringing his consumer advocacy into this public debate. I agree with his point of view 100%.
Finally, I hope to get a blog entry up this evening after Apple earnings are announced. However, if I don't, I won't be able to post an entry until Tuesday afternoon because I'm doing a major client presentation in Boston Tuesday morning. My apologies; I'm sure there'll be some juicy data to discuss.
Full disclosure: the author owns Apple stock (still).
More full disclosure: I recognize that it may be annoying to regular readers to have to re-read the above disclosure on most of my posts. Perhaps this explanation will help: some of the syndication networks that carry my articles require the disclosure statement to ensure that I have no hidden conflicts of interest (there's that private versus public data thing again). I consider the disclosure to be important so that readers can properly weigh my opinions, so I will continue making them, considering them one of the prices of broad distribution. But I do apologize for the inconvenience to regular readers.
Technorati Tags: Apple, Financial analysis, Harvard, Leopard, Macintosh, Disclosure, Wall Street Journal, Walt Mossberg
posted by Carl Howe at
10:38 AM
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